


you are geoff

by harperuth



Category: Tanis (Podcast)
Genre: Cryptid!Geoff, Gen, liminal space
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-17
Updated: 2017-03-17
Packaged: 2018-10-06 17:54:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10341057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harperuth/pseuds/harperuth
Summary: geoff (disambiguation)





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stiction](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stiction/gifts).



> a message sent to my girlfriends about a week ago: 
> 
> i want to write a fic where geoff is a cryptid titled "you are je/geoff" so bad.

It’s been ~~a week~~ ~~two months~~ ~~forty-six years~~ …it’s been…time is strange here. 

~~Jeff~~ Geoff (Jeff?) has been having…a strange year. There was…a boy? A man. There have been many men. One man was made of shadows. Or eaten by the shadows. Possibly all three. Geoff’s life has had a lot of men in it. Boys he dated in high school, men who died in the sand next to him, sad faced boys in flannel from the Pacific Northwest. 

He sometimes feels there should be another word after Pacific Northwest but it’s…

He has trouble thinking sometimes. 

Every time he tries to focus there’s a dissonance. Something in him screams to keep moving, running, the shadows are **coming**. Logic claims the shadows aren’t real, none of this is real he needs to get home, he needs to find Ni—

-

There was a light. A blinking red light that appeared when he moved near the ticking. The voices and the shadows didn’t like the ticking but he managed to fight them off long enough to investigate. 

— _investigating the death of your brother, would you be willing to sign this release form to appear on this, well, it’s like portable internet radio?”_

_“So, a podcast?”_

_“Oh, yeah! Anyway, would you be inter— “_

The light continues to blink. The red is jarring after ~~years~~ ~~months~~ ~~weeks~~ so much time surrounded by green and brown and _dark buzz **ing shadoWS THEY’RE COMING YOU HAVE TO RUN GEOF**_ —

-

He knows it’s not a nightmare. Those are generally soaked in sunshine and sand and screaming, not rain and green and buzzing. He watches a bird take off into the gray sky with something approaching interest. He tries to chase the feeling of birds in the woods. They wore masks and…someone was always talking about (to?) them. Geoff tries to remember who it was that talked to the people who were birds who were people but the bird slips away and his head hurts and he doesn’t know why. 

He slept with a man once with birds tattooed on him. He doesn’t know why he thinks of this before he moves on, further from the shadows, but there’s a fleeting moment of nostalgia before he flees into the forest. 

-

Some ~~days~~ ~~weeks~~ time later he finds a wall. He used to build walls. No, that’s no right. He tore down a wall. The last time he was in a forest with a wall he—

— _had to mix this shit in Afghanistan. We used it to build armories, other small key structures. There’s no way the enemy’s getting through this stuff.”_

_“Did you ever build anything this big?”_

_“No, definitely no—“_

The wall doesn’t look like those walls though, it looks like a cabin, the walls covered in wooden shingles, but it stretches out further than he can see in either direction. He reaches out and touches the wooden structure. For a moment, the buzzing that has been chasing him quiets. Geoff runs his fingers down the panels that comprise the wall. He shrugs and turns right, keeping a hand on the wall as he goes. 

-

He follows the wall for days. He knows it’s days this time, because he tracks the sunrise and sunsets. He doesn’t sleep. For some reason, he doesn’t need to. He remembers…someone talking about this effect of the breach, heightened energy. The wall itself changes and curves. Yet every time he presses his head to it and stares down the length of it, it seems to go straight on forever. He still _feels_ himself turning and winding. 

It becomes different walls sometimes. There’s no perceptible segue, he’ll just look up and be touching concrete or logs or—

_“—skin soft underneath his fingers as the sad faced boy breathes next to him. The boy, no man, turns to him and grins, for a moment betraying the sadness that lies deep inside him._

_Geoff grins back, “Not your usual ‘journalistic method’?”_

_The man huffed a laugh, “Is this your usual response to probing quest—“_

Slowly more has been filtering back the longer he stays in contact with the wall. He was here to meet someone but they…they never showed up. Or they were never here or never meant to be here. Geoff can feel the buzzing from very far off, the frustration it’s engulfed in. 

-

There had been a phone call. He remembers that now. But now he’s not sure if the phone call was real, if the man was real, if any of this up to this point at all has been real. There’s memories he feels have to be real, too deep emotionally…blood on his hands and sand in his eyes, heart rabbiting with fear and another boy’s sweaty palm in his, that godforsaken smell and his _brother_ —

The specifics aren’t important. They can’t be important, that’s something he learned the first time he was living day to day in a constant fight or flight response. If you think too hard about anything real, anything _important_ in those moments, it will be lost forever. 

Geoff sincerely hopes he isn’t lost forever. 

-

He doesn’t mean to fall asleep. _He doesn’t mean to fall asleep._ But somewhere along the wall just after sunrise... (And it should have been a sign that he couldn’t remember which sunrise it was, that he’d lost count, stupid stupid _stupid_.) He also doesn’t know how long he sleeps. All he knows is when he wakes the wall is _gone_ and the buzzing is racing towards him. The shadows have moved beyond frustration and it feels like pure rage barreling his way. He doesn’t even have a moment to look for the wall; he just runs. 

-

He keeps running until he comes to some kind of clearing. There’s a structure in it, but he can’t quite keep it in his mind. Everything is shimmering, and the buzzing is approaching quickly, but Geoff knows he has time. He doesn’t know how he knows but the knowledge is there. He pauses at the edge of the clearing and gazes at the structure. There’s the same ticking noise that surrounded the red light, but the ticking is moving, it’s attached to the blur that’s _moving towards him how didn’t he see that._

He freezes as the blur comes forward. It’s not…it doesn’t feel bad like the buzzing. For a moment, everything comes into focus and the being in front of him coalesces into fear and confusion. It’s holding a hand out and saying something but he doesn’t understand. He shakes his head and squints at the hand. 

The voice filters in, “Sir, are you…are you okay? Do you know where you are?” 

The buzzing rushes back as the blur snaps back into place. Geoff gasps and turns towards it. He glances back to the blur, which has backed off again. He shakes himself once more, turns, and runs. 

He doesn’t know why but he knows he can’t let the buzzing catch him. There’s a man. He’s meeting…a man (a boy in flannel and a sad face) and the shadows eat men. 

**Author's Note:**

> things of which i will never let go jack:  
> 1) the jeff/geoff spelling confusion in the early days of the podcast (from the actual creators themselves)  
> 2) bad journalism ethics
> 
> hmu to talk about these things some more on tumblr at floralpunkbarton


End file.
